Tag: Jimmy Fallon
-
How to Create a New Comedy/Talk Show
You have a host. Your assignment is to build a new comedy/talk show around him or her. How do you even begin to do that? Recently The New York Times went behind the scenes to give a glimpse into how James Corden and his staff are creating their version of Late Late Show, premiering on…
-
How to Write a Funny Caption
Say you want to write a funny caption for this cartoon, which was the subject of Caption Contest #447 in The New Yorker. You write funny captions for uncaptioned cartoons the same way you’d write jokes about a Found Photo, which is an unaltered photo that wasn’t originally intended to be funny. Examples of Found…
-
How the Two Jimmies Can Prepare for Colbert
As I write this, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is dominating its competition. Since its premiere on February 17, 2014, Tonight has earned a 1.28 rating in Adults 18-49, compared to a .65 for Jimmy Kimmel Live and a .51 for Late Show with David Letterman. But the game is changing. Sometime in 2015…
-
Seth Meyers Did Not Steal My Joke
Ideas get stolen in show business all the time but less often than you might think. I teach a class in comedy writing for late-night TV. A couple of nights ago I was giving my students some practice in turning newspaper articles into monologue jokes. Toward the end of the session I mentioned an article…